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Torture Memos Link Lawyers and Psychologists

In the four newly released memos from the Bush Administration’s Office of Legal Counsel, the argument for using psychological torture tactics against al-Qaeda detainees is made in scientific terms

But the science underlying the decision was dubious at best.

In the memos, Justice Department lawyers Jay S. Bybee and Steven Bradbury conclude that tactics such as slamming detainees against walls, confining them in coffin-like boxes, denying them sleep for up to 11 days, and even inducing a drowning sensation through waterboarding do not legally qualify as torture, because the tactics don’t create severe pain and suffering or lasting medical or mental harm.

That conclusion relied heavily on the advice of two psychologists, James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.My July 2007 article, “Rorschach and Awe,” gave the first detailed account of the two psychologists’ role as the architects and teachers of the coercive interrogation methods used by the C.I.A. and, later, the Department of Defense. “Based on your research into the use of these methods at the SERE school and consultation with others with expertise in the field of psychology and interrogation, you do not anticipate that any prolonged harm would result from the use of the waterboard,” Bybee writes in a memo dated August 1, 2002

But what, if anything, did Mitchell and Jessen—both devout Mormons—know about real-world interrogations and the art of eliciting accurate, actionable intelligence from hostile foreign fighters? Absolutely nothing, according to Steve Kleinman, an Air Force Reserve Colonel and expert in human-intelligence operations. In 2007, Kleinman told Vanity Fair he found it astonishing that the C.I.A. “chose two clinical psychologists who had no intelligence background whatsoever, who had never conducted an interrogation … to do something that had never been proven in the real world.”

Others called their methods a “voodoo science.”In fact, their techniques were simply reverse-engineered versions of those believed to be used by the Soviet Union, North Korea, and China.

Yet whatever Mitchell and Jessen lacked in real-world experience, they offered a patina of science that gave the Bush administration cover to “take the gloves off,” as Donald Rumsfeld so memorably put it.

The newly released memos suggest that Bush lawyers were unquestioning in their reliance on the C.I.A.’s psychological experts. In green-lighting interrogators to intensify the interrogation of Saudi-born Abu Zubaydah, Bybee parrots back to Rizzo the C.I.A.’s psychological profile of the detainee: a hardened terrorist committed to Jihad, the likely author of al-Qaeda’s training manual on resisting interrogations. “A highly self-directed individual who prizes his independence,” Bybee concludes, with no history of “psychiatric pathology.” Someone wily enough to deceive interrogators and tough enough to bounce back from waterboarding.

Subsequent reporting by Ron Suskind, the Washington Post, and others revealed Zubaydah to have been a glorified travel agent for would-be jihadists who suffered from mental illness and whose journals reveal signs of self-delusion.

If not to provide bankable insight or protect detainees from abuse, what was the real role of the C.I.A.’s so-called psychological experts? As the memos suggest—and Physicians for Human Rights has long contended—the presence of medical professionals and psychologists at these grisly interrogations served as a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card. So long as these witnesses with Ph.D.’s confirmed that detainees were not suffering long-term harm, then torture was not being committed.

Taken as a whole, the memos point up how much damage two sets of professionals with fancy-sounding degrees can accomplish when they join forces. Under the cloak of law and science, the Bush Administration lawyers and the SERE psychologists managed to evade the Geneva Conventions, subvert U.S. law, and sanction the torture of detainees. The consequences are still being untangled today